State's Child Custody System Under Scrutiny Over Costs

Peter Szymonik of Glastonbury says he had to dip into his child's college fund to pay for the court-appointed guardians who represented his sons during his 2008 divorce.

"I've got this nightmare scenario," said Szymonik, a member of an advocacy group lobbying to reform the state's child custody system.

Criticism over high legal costs is just one area under examination by a state panel that must make recommendations to the legislature's Judiciary Committee by Feb. 1.

The task force is studying the roles of lawyers and guardians — called guardians ad litem — appointed by courts to represent children in contentious cases involving parenting and the custody and care of children.

It is also studying whether judges are complying with a statute requiring them to consider the best interests of children. The volunteer 10-member task force, formed last year, is also considering whether Connecticut should adopt a presumption that shared custody is in the best interest of a minor child in actions involving the custody and care of the child.

"We're here to look for solutions and try to see if we can improve the system that everybody is complaining about," one task force member, Rep. Minnie Gonzalez (D-Hartford), said at a Jan. 9 public hearing.

Besides receiving numerous emails, the task force heard from nearly 80 people at the public hearing earlier this month at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.

Parents complained that guardians ad litem (GALs) are sometimes charging mothers and fathers tens of thousands of dollars to represent their kids' interests. Critics also say GALs, many of them family attorneys, have too much influence on what happens to children in divorces through their authority to investigate families and reporting back to judges.

The task force has heard testimony from experts that 1.5 percent of divorce cases include a full child-custody trial.

Szymonik, 50, who says he's had joint physical custody of his sons, now 12 and 9, since his divorce in 2008, paid two GALs more than $20,000. He said he was forced to raid a $6,500 college fund for one boy to pay the first GAL, and he still owes the second GAL money.

Each GAL charged $250 an hour and spent minimal time with the children, Szymonik said. He, like others, say the amount of money GALs earn should be tracked since they are being thrust upon families involved in heated disputes over child custody.

"Right now, the state of Connecticut's GALs are being paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the court system, by the parents, and nowhere are the payments being tracked," he added.

The co-chairmen of the task force, Sue Cousineau, a lawyer from Middletown, and Sharon Wicks, a Danbury lawyer, are active guardians ad litem, a fact that led some to challenge their appointment by the state legislature as a conflict of interest.

But Dornfeld notes that when the committee was formed, each member had to meet certain criteria. One chair, for example, had to be a practicing attorney with no fewer than 10 years of experience as a guardian ad litem or attorney for the minor child in custody matters. The other chair had to be a practicing attorney with significant experience in handling child custody cases.

"Anybody who was appointed for the two slots specified by the special act (that formed the task force) would, by definition, be working in the field and I suppose then be subject to the criticism that we have a conflict of interest," Dornfeld said.

Dornfeld points out that the same concern could be raised about two other members of the committee — Jennifer Verraneault and Thomas Weissmuller — who are members of the National Parents Organization of Connecticut, which supports shared parenting.

"I believe [the task force] was created to bring in points of view on both sides," Dornfeld said.

Dornfeld said there are several ways couples can settle their custody disputes free in family court. They can, for example, rely on trained mediators. She maintains that the financial benefits of working as a GAL are "vastly overrated," noting the hourly rate of the GAL is typically less than the hourly rate of each parent's attorney. But she declined to say how much she typically earns annually working as a GAL.

Like Cousineau and Dornfeld, Verraneault and Weissmuller are trained as GALs. But they don't work in that capacity. They say they went through the GAL training to learn more about the system they're studying. Many contend that new GALs can't get assigned a case if they try; the work goes to only a handful of GALs.

"It's all about the money, and it's not about the kids," Verraneault said. "It's a crime that's happening."

The Connecticut legal system, unlike others, encourages conflict, allowing lawyers, particularly those working as GALs, to make more money, Weissmuller said.